THE LA RAZA CRIME TIDAL WAVE - “These figures do not attempt to allege that foreign
nationals in the country illegally commit more
crimes than other groups,” the report states. “It
simply identifies thousands of crimes that should
not have occurred and thousands of victims that
should not have been victimized because the
perpetrator should not be here.”
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON

"This is how they will destroy
America from within. The leftist billionaires who
orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing
us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of
millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt
for those of us who must endure the consequences of

our communities being intruded upon
by gang members, drug dealers and human

traffickers. These people
have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats
who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA
McCARTHY

Gaetz: ‘The American People Are Sick and Tired of a Double Standard That Seems to Pave a Yellow Brick Road to the Exoneration for Hillary Clinton’

Friday on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), an outspoken critic of the so-called deep state, offered his optimism that the Department of Justice under Attorney General William Barr would work to root out “corruption” within his department and compared his leadership to that of his predecessor former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“The American people are sick and tired of a double standard that seems to pave a yellow brick road to the exoneration for Hillary Clinton when they were clearly crimes committed there, while at the same time casting these aspersions on Donald Trump without a basis as a result of bias,” he said. “The only reason while we haven’t had people thrown in jail yet is because Jeff Sessions did a terrible job as attorney general.”

“Now, we got a real attorney general,” Gaetz continued. “Mr. Durham is on the case. And the information we have now seems to indicate that at every level of this corruption, there is going to be accountability and there is going to be a restoration of justice and the rule of law. And I can’t wait for it.”

Is it a signal
that she's back in the game because she's selling her president-ability to the
world's global billionaire crowd and laying the groundwork for more
funds? There are all kinds of ways for foreign billionaires to get
money to the U.S. without consequences, after all. What's more, it's
pretty much the biggest base of support she has, which is at least one reason
why she lost the 2016 election.

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“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public
service”
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the
top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes.

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The basic components
of the operation are lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street and Fortune 500
audiences, corporate campaign contributions, and donations to the ostensibly
philanthropic Clinton Foundation.”

*

"But what the
Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the
American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it
to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal.
Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to
every person on the planet by now." ---- Patricia McCarthy -
AMERICANTHINKER.com

Hillary and her campaign aides have long been involved
with Russia for reasons of personal gain. Clinton herself got $145 million in
donations to the Clinton Foundation for allowing Russia to take over twenty
percent of all uranium production in the U.S. Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, is reaping the
financial benefits of being on the board of a Russian company, Joule, which he did not disclose. PATRICIA McCARTHY

Had Hillary been elected, the Clinton
Foundation would be raking in even more millions than it did before. She
would be happily selling access, favors and our remaining freedoms out from
under us. PATRICIA McCARTHY

Going Medieval in California’s Streets

California, to some people’s way of thinking, is the most modern state in the country, if not the most cutting-edge place on earth. It’s progressive, hip, innovative—a bellwether, filled with pioneers and opinion-makers. It’s also unique for its constant battles against biblical catastrophes—earthquakes, droughts, landslides, and floods are all part of the state’s past as well as its present, as are raging wildfires that have left large tracts in ashes. Even secular humanists might be tempted to declare the state cursed.

Now California is home to a public-health crisis. This one is no act of God, though, but rather the inevitable result of tolerating unsanitary conditions. Diseases, somebringing to mind medieval times, have returned to urban streets. Typhus, carried by infected fleas and transmitted by rats and other animals, plagues Los Angeles. Hepatitis A, spread through fecal matter, hassickenedmore than 1,000 people in Southern California since 2017. A “trash and rodent nightmare”threatensdowntown Los Angeles. There’s “a mountain of rotting, oozing, stinking trash” that stretches “a good 20 yards along a skid row alley,” where “rats popped their heads out of the debris like they were in a game of Whac-A-Mole.”

The garbage and disease outbreaks are closely linked. In late May, the local NBC affiliate reported that “piles of rotting garbage left uncollected by the city of Los Angeles, even after promises to clean it up, are fueling concerns about a new epidemic after last year’s record number of flea-borne typhus cases.” These garbage piles, along with human feces in San Francisco streets requiring apps for avoidance, contrast with California’s progressive past. Progressives once cared about clean streets and public health. Today, they value political correctness, protecting the interests of the homeless over pedestrians. Their policies have produced appalling conditions in urban neighborhoods.

Photo courtesy of author

“This approach calls itself progressive but is the polar opposite of what progressives supported, which was sanitation and public health,” said Joel Kotkin, a City Journal contributing editor and a Chapman University fellow. “Sewer socialism, if you will, was a noble attempt to clean up what were often dirty dystopias. The new progressives want to create a new green dystopia, turning the modern city back into a place more like Dharavi in Mumbai than La Guardia’s New York.”

Henry Miller, a senior fellow for health studies at the Pacific Research Institute, believes that California is virtually unable to provide basic municipal services. The state “has become a victim of its own attractiveness, combined with political mismanagement” and “one-party rule.” Miller agrees with the downtown merchant who told a Los Angeles Times columnist that “once a pile takes shape, the appearance of lawlessness and neglect is a magnet for other dumpers.” The same, he noted, is “true of homeless encampments, panhandlers, the expansion of skid row neighborhoods, the increase in vandalism and other minor crimes, and so on.”

Under progressive governance, California appears to be regressing at an alarming pace. While the state can’t do much about some disasters, aside from cleaning up afterward, it can stop its self-inflicted march into the past.

Kerry Jacksonis a fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.

The U.S. Created Just 75,000 Jobs in May, Much Worse Than Expected

The U.S. economy created only 75,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.6 percent, the Labor Department said Friday.

Economists had expected the pace of job creation to moderate to 180,000 after April’s extremely hot initial report of 263,000. The unemployment rate was expected to rise to 3.7 percent.

The estimate for jobs created in March was revised down to 153,000 from the previously reported 189,000. April was revised down to 224,000.

After revisions, the economy has added 151,000 over the past three months. For the entire year, payroll gains have averaged 164,000, a much slower rate than 2018’s 223,000.

Wages gains slightly lagged forecasts. Average hourly earnings were up 3.1 percent compared with a year ago, just below the 3.2 percent expected, and 0.2 percent compared with April. The average work week held steady at 34.4 hours.

Unemployment is at the lowest rate since December 1969. The rate for African Americans declined sharply to 6.2 percent from 6.7 percent.

The lower than expected figure for job creation, however, is likely to intensify expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut its interest rate target sooner rather than later.

Professional and business services was the strongest category for the month, adding 33,000 positions. Health care grew by 16,000. Construction added 4,000. Manufacturing and mining added 3,000.

Retail shrank by 15,000. There was no noticeable bump from Census jobs, which many economists had expected to show up in May’s numbers.

Pelosi: If We Close the Door to Immigrants We Won’t Be the Country that Leads the World

Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) argued Americans place as leader of the world was dependent on immigration.

Pelosi said, “We always have to be optimistic and positive because what they did was so monumental and enables us to have are our debates and differences of opinion. But we do have to remember the values that freedom isn’t free. So, and part of that freedom is who we are as Americans. And who we are as Americans no one said it better than Ronald Reagan; Ronald Reagan had the biggest voice for welcoming people to our country and that we cannot close the door or else we won’t be the country that leads the world.”

So when cities across the country declare that they will NOT be sanctuary, guess where ALL the illegals, criminals, gang members fleeing ICE will go???? straight to your welcoming city. So ironically the people fighting for sanctuary city status, may have an unprecedented crime wave to deal with along with the additional expense.

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$17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.

*

$12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English.

*

$22 billion is spent on (AFDC) welfare to illegal aliens each year.

*

$2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as (SNAP) food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.

*

$3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.

30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. Does not include local jails and State Prisons.

*

2012 illegal aliens sent home $62 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. This is why Mexico is getting involved in our politics.

*

$200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.

America is a nation with a severe housing crisis, a million legals who are homeless, tens of millions of legals who have given up finding a job that pays living wages and yet the borders are wide open to keep the hordes coming simply to keep wages DEPRESSED.

THE SLOW DEATH OF CALIFORNIA, A WELFARE STATE AND COLONY OF MEXICO

With crime soaring, rampant homelessness, sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in the country and its “worst state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive government is devolving into a third-world country. JANET LEVY

With crime soaring, rampant homelessness, sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in the country and its “worst state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive government is devolving into a third-world country. JANET LEVY

"This is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers. These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY

"Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein

WE SAT AND WATCHED WHILE THEY DESTROYED OUR COUNTRY!

We are now in the process of destabilizing our own country. FROSTY WOOLDRIGE

The Democrat Party’s secret agenda for wider open borders, more welfare for invading illegals, more jobs and free anything they illegally vote for…. All to destroy the two-party system and build the GLOBALISTS’ DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

Demonstrably and irrefutably the Democrat Party became the party whose principle objective is to thoroughly transform the nature of the American electorate by means of open borders and the mass, unchecked importation of illiterate third world peasants who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats and their La Raza welfare state. FRONTPAGE MAG

AMERICA, THE ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE STATE

“Through love of having children we're going to take over." Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96

*

“The children of illegal aliens are commonly known as “anchor babies,” as they anchor their illegal alien and noncitizen parents in the U.S. There are at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the country, a population that exceeds the total number of annual American births.” JOHN BINDER

“Through love of having children we're going to take over." Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96

This annual income for an impoverished American family is $10,000 less than the more than $34,500 in federal funds which are spent on each unaccompanied minor border crosser.

A study by Tom Wong of the University of California at San Diego discovered that more than 25 percent of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens in the program have anchor babies. That totals about 200,000 anchor babies who are the children of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens. This does not include the anchor babies of DACA-qualified illegal aliens. JOHN BINDER

“As Breitbart News recently reported, there are more anchor baby births in the Los Angeles, California metro area than the total U.S. births in 14 states and the District of Colombia. Every year, American taxpayers are billed about $2.4 billion to pay for the births of illegal aliens.” JOHN BINDER

“The radicals seek nothing less than secession from the United States whether to form their own sovereign state or to reunify with Mexico. Those who desire reunification with Mexico are irredentists who seek to reclaim Mexico's "lost" territories in the American Southwest.” Maria Hsia Chang Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada Reno

"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free medical in the United States."

"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has previously proposed ranting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added."

"Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein.

*

Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of an illegal alien population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population is $25.3 billion. That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a household headed by a U.S. citizen.

THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN MORE THAN ONE BILLION PER YEAR FOR MEX ANCHOR BABY BREEDING OF FUTURE DEMS!

AMNESTY: THE HOAX TO KEEP WAGES FOR LEGALS DEPRESSED!

"Critics argue that giving amnesty to 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. would have an immediate negative impact on America’s working and middle class — specifically black Americans and the white working class — who would be in direct competition for blue-collar jobs with the largely low-skilled illegal alien population." JOHN BINDER

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"Additionally, under current legal immigration laws, if given amnesty, the illegal alien population would be allowed to bring an unlimited number of their foreign relatives to the U.S. This population could boost already high legal immigration levels to an unprecedented high. An amnesty for illegal aliens would also likely triple the number of border-crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border." JOHN BINDER

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“At the current rate of invasion (mostly through Mexico, but also through Canada) the United States will be completely over run with illegal aliens by the year 2025. I’m not talking about legal immigrants who follow US law to become citizens. In less than 20 years, if we do not stop the invasion, ILLEGAL aliens and their offspring will be the dominant population in the United States”…. Tom Barrett

HERITAGE FOUNDATION:

AMNESTY WILL ADD ANOTHER 100 MILLION IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS

“In the U.S. the remittances that come of illegal immigration drive down U.S. wages, particularly of those on the lowest-skilled parts of the ladder, and as money flows out from local communities, leaves them underinvested and run-down. Nobody can live two places at once. Illegal immigrants live here but their money lives in Mexico. And it's often untaxed.” MONICA SHOWALTER

Who ultimately really pays for all the true cost of all that "cheap" labor?

THE DEVASTATING COST OF MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS

“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”. DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE

LA RAZA DOUBLED U.S. POPULATION AND VOTED TO SURRENDER AMERICAN BORDERS FOR EASY PLUNDERING BY NARCOMEX.

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“Through love of having children we're going to take over." Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96

“The cost of the Dream Act is far bigger than the Democrats or their media allies admit. Instead of covering 690,000 younger illegals now enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA” amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million illegals, according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”

THE NEW PRIVILEGED CLASS: Illegals!

This is why you work From Jan - May paying taxes to the government ....with the rest of the calendar year is money for you and your family.

Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or 6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, with his fake Social Security number, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200..... free.

He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.

He qualifies for food stamps.

He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.

His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.

He requires bilingual teachers and books.

He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.

If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.

Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.

He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.

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Steinle’s murderer, Jose Zarate and been deported 5xs!

*

"While walking with her father on a pier in San Francisco in 2015, Steinle was shot by the illegal alien. Steinle pleaded with her father to not let her die, but she soon passed in her father’s arms."

*

In the last two years, ICE officers made 266,000 arrests of aliens with criminal records, including those charged or convicted of 100,000 assaults, 30,000 s ex crimes, and 4,000 violent k illings. Over the years, thousands of Americans have been brutally k illed by those who illegally entered our country, and thousands more lives will be lost if we don't act right now.

“It’s almost impossible to get convicted in this city,” said [Sgt. Kevin] Healy, who works in the Police Department’s narcotics division. “The message needs to be sent that it’s not OK to be selling drugs. It’s not allowed anywhere else. Where else can you walk up to someone you don’t know and purchase crack and heroin? Is there such a place?”…

Police say drug dealers from the East Bay ride BART into San Francisco every day to prey on the addicts slumped on our sidewalks, and yet the city that claims to so desperately want to help those addicts often looks the other way.

STEALING AMERICA!

Here’s how California surrendered to Mexico… OR WAS HANDED TO MEXICO BY NANCY PELOSI, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, KAMALA HARRIS, JERRY BROWN and GAVIN NEWSOM!

According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s 2017 report, illegal immigrants, and their children, cost American taxpayers a net $116 billion annually -- roughly $7,000 per alien annually. While high, this number is not an outlier: a recent study by the Heritage Foundation found that low-skilled immigrants (including those here illegally) cost Americans trillions over the course of their lifetimes, and a study from the National Economics Editorial found that illegal immigration costs America over $140 billion annually. As it stands, illegal immigrants are a massive burden on American taxpayers.

How do we deal with America's mental illness crisis?

Before Ronald Reagan became President Reagan in 1981, the old Soviet Union (dominated by today's Russia) imprisoned political opponents in psychiatric hospitals. In later years, many of those former inmates recalled that the very fact of being confined among people who were truly mentally ill, was so stressful as to induce a degree of that illness in the sanest of people. Being forcibly injected with psychotropic drugs increased that tendency.

The communist Soviet leaders hoped that imprisoning people in that manner would provide their government with a plausible cover of compassion. It enabled them to deny that they were punishing dissidents, rather claiming that they were "helping" them. It also insinuated that only crazy people oppose communism. The forced hospitalization policy did in fact work to suppress some political dissent, because everyone knew that it was an insidiously cruel punishment.

President Reagan, ardently anti-communist, successfully promoted the release of mentally ill patients in the U.S. by reducing funding for their care. Thousands who had been involuntarily confined were turned out into the streets. Most of them became homeless and hopeless. Unemployable, all too many turned to drugs and crime. Their death rate was high.

While Reagan is vilified for this policy, the fact is that after he left the presidency, no subsequent president, nor any Congress, reinstituted the pre-Reagan policy. They could have but did not. Today, involuntary confinement to mental institutions for prolonged periods is difficult to achieve.

That is as it should be. The danger of a Soviet-style policy by a future socialist-oriented U.S. government is by no means out of the question. After all, it could be asked by leftists, what truly same person would actually wish to own a lethal weapon? Who in his right mind could possibly support the Second Amendment? At least that is what the radical left would ask, and you know what the answer would be.

California is no longer the paradise it was under Governor Reagan. Radical leftism has taken root. It is all but a separate country in many ways. It has its own immigration policy, illegal under federal law. At one point, its governor even floated the idea that the state should produce its own virtual currency in the form of accounting tricks, an action uncomfortably close to secession.

Radical leftist policies in California have put on public display the embarrassing appearance of a third-world hell-hole. Swathes of the state, mostly in big cities, are heavily populated by semi-conscious (or even unconscious) drug addicts, and entire city blocks seem to be covered in garbage and human feces. The problem is getting worse. A harsh comedian suggested that conditions are so bad that illegal aliens might return to their native countries as refugees from America.

As a proposed solution, "Officials in San Francisco decided ... to back a plan allowing the city to force some people with serious mental illness and drug addiction issues into treatment."

Among progressives, this is a formula for internecine warfare. Leftist philosophy is socially libertarian when it comes to drug abuse, but it is also authoritarian when it comes to political expedience. These two do not mix.

The policy presently proposed by San Francisco is timid, so much so as to be ineffective. It would involuntarily commit very few. "Only about five people could be forced into treatment in San Francisco under the newly-passed plan. ... But Wiener's new bill could bump that up to 55, which is the number of people who now fit the definition for at least involuntary holds. San Francisco's health department has identified an additional 48 people on the fringe who have been involuntarily detained six or seven times."

As you see, this is by no means a clean sweep of the streets, but only a symbolic gesture. It is not the numbers; it is the principle that is of significance. Its portents could be enormous.

Small government and personal accountability are vital principles of conservatism. Involuntary commitment to mental institutions poses a threat to those principles — but so does illegal public disorder. What policy, then, will solve the problem without endangering personal liberty?

President Reagan told us there are no easy solutions, but there are simple ones. The simple solution is to enact constitutional laws and properly enforce them. This cannot be done in isolation. It cannot be done by local governments that flout federal immigration laws, nor by policies that regard public defecation as a human right.

The debauchment of California did not occur overnight, nor will the "simple" solution be "easy." A policy directed only at cosmetic measures is not the answer.

I am not optimistic that those presently in power in California (and in other states with similar problems) will look inward and admit that their political and social(ist) philosophies caused the problems. I admit to being entirely cynical in the matter. Leftist politicians serve themselves, and no one else, at whatever cost to the public.

Neither am I optimistic that the general electorate in the affected regions will re-evaluate their political opinions. As Sir Winston Churchill said, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

The temptation to enact draconian anti-drug laws is powerful, and in some limited instances, such policies could be useful. The specter of a police state should, however, moderate any authoritarian impulses we might entertain.

Not all social ills are remediable by government. Some might not be remediable at all. To some extent, tough love, the abandonment of the incorrigible to their chosen fate, might be the best policy. No delight can be taken in that, but reality can be unpleasant.

Subjecting the majority to the depredations of the intransigent will cause only further harm.

AMERICA: THE RICH GET MUCH RICHER AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS BLUDGEONED…. Illegals get the jobs!

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Why do the billionaire class all want wider open borders and hordes more “cheap” labor illegals? It’s all about keeping wages depressed for greater profits!

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“Today’s society benefits those who shaped it, and it has

been shaped not by working men and women, but by the new

aristocratic elite. Big banks, big tech, big multi-national

corporations, along with their allies in the academy and the

media—these are the aristocrats of our age. They live in the

United States, but they consider themselves citizens of the

world” Sen. Josh Hawley

"This is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of

our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers. These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY

California solvency threatened by Silicon Valley stock crash

The California Legislative Analyst Office warned that a crash in Silicon Valley stock could threaten state solvency with $12 billion in annual capital gains tax losses.

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) has provided the California Legislature with fiscal analyses and budget advice for 75 years to ensure the "executive branch is implementing legislative policy in a cost efficient and effective manner."

According to the LAO, California personal income tax (PIT) collections are the "single largest source of General Fund revenue." Key to those collections are capital gains taxes associated with Silicon Valley stock gains. With the tech stock–saturated NASDAQ Index up 371.08 percent since 2009, California's annual capital gains tax collection skyrocketed by 800 percent from about $2.1 billion in 2010 to $16 billion in 2018.

With California's total budget spending for state employee wages and benefits at about $10 billion a year, the LAO warned in January that PIT collections for Fiscal Year 2018–2019, ending in June 30, were trending down by almost $2.7 billion, mostly due to a 22-percent fourth-quarter tank in the NASDAQ market index. Fortunately for state bureaucrats, Silicon Valley stocks spiked to an all-time-record high on April 29, and the State of California was back on track to meeting its projected budget revenues.

Concerned by the continuing China trade war and escalating antitrust actions against Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon ending the Silicon Valley stock market boom, investor selling caused the NASDAQ Index to wipe out all its recent gains and plunge to a 2.84-percent loss for the last 12 months.

The new study argues that for the current FY2018–2019, there is a 76 percent chance that California capital gains tax collections will vary by at least $1 billion and could fall to as low as $13.5 billion, or about $2.5 billion below this year's budget projected revenue. The LAO is now also warning that with a similar variability risk, capital gains tax collections shortfalls could increase dramatically over the next four years.

The LAO estimates that despite spectacular capital gains for insiders in the initial public offerings of Silicon Valley's Lyft in March and Uber in April, FY2019–2020 capital gains tax collections could fall to as low as $7.5 billion, or about $7.5 billion below budget.

The LAO estimates that capital gains tax collection could nosedive to as low as $4 billion in each of the following three years, risking up to another $36 billion in state budget shortfalls.

But the LAO points to its State Fiscal Health Index that tracks the strength of California economic conditions with ranges from 0 (representing the lowest level in the last 25 years) to 100 (representing the highest level in the last 25 years).

The State Fiscal Health was at a nine-year high of 96 in March, just below the cyclical record highs of 100 in November 1999. But California capital gains tax collections after both previous cyclical highs fell by about 80 percent over the next two years, from $10.5 billion to $2.7 billion in 2002 and from $11.7 billion to $2.1 billion in 2010.

The LAO hedged its concerns regarding a potential massive budget crisis with the statement: "Knowing when the state's next budget slowdown will happen is impossible. Many economic factors outside the state's control influence state revenues."

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Pushes for $2 Billion in New Taxes and Fees

As California enjoys a historic budget surplus of more than $21.5 billion, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing for more than $2 billion in new taxes and fees.

His plan calls for instituting a water tax, phone tax, and health care penalty known as the “individual mandate.”

“Without the mandate, everybody’s premiums go up,” Newsom said when pitching his plan.

Citizens would begin to be penalized in 2020 for not having health insurance in order to provide further subsidies for Covered California, the state insurance exchange. Within three years, the revenue is expected to top over $1 billion.

“We’re talking about close to $2.4 billion in new taxes,” said Republican state Sen. Patricia Bates, who represents both parts of Orange and San Diego counties. “Everything in California is costing more and incomes are less.”

Many in the state legislature remain cautious to raising taxes after former Gov. Jerry Brown pushed through a controversial 2017 transportation package that levied a 40% tax hike on the state’s excise gas tax and increased yearly vehicle registration fees.

While the campaign to repeal the gas tax, known as Prop. 6, failed at the ballot box by a margin of 56 to 43 percent, many Democrats in the Assembly remain hesitant to again raise taxes after Republicans successfully recalled Sen. John Newman (D-Orange) after connecting him to the unpopular gas tax hike last June.

COST to AMERICANS of the LA RAZA MEXICAN OCCUPATION in CALIFORNIA ALONE: $2,370 per legal.

All that “cheap” labor is staggeringly expensive!

"Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein.

Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of an illegal alien population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population is $25.3 billion. That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a household headed by a U.S. citizen.

AMERICA: THE RICH GET MUCH RICHER AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS BLUDGEONED…. Illegals get the jobs!

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Why do the billionaire class all want wider open borders and hordes more “cheap” labor illegals? It’s all about keeping wages depressed for greater profits!

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“Today’s society benefits those who shaped it, and it has

been shaped not by working men and women, but by the new

aristocratic elite. Big banks, big tech, big multi-national

corporations, along with their allies in the academy and the

media—these are the aristocrats of our age. They live in the

United States, but they consider themselves citizens of the

world” Sen. Josh Hawley

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"This is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of

our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human

traffickers. These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY

The stated mission of the nonpartisan think tank known as “T4-America” is to assist local government leaders make sure that states and federal government invest in “smart, homegrown, locally-driven transportation solutions.”

The World Economic Forum highlights four basic economic pillars that contribute to global economic competitiveness among the 193 nations of the world: 1) institutions; 2) Infrastructure; 3) macroeconomic environment; and 4) health and primary education.

The United States' strongest basic pillar has been infrastructure that includes effective modes of transport, electricity supplies free from interruptions and shortages, and an extensive telecommunications network that allow rapid and free flow of information.

The U.S. historically has been at or near the top each year for infrastructure, and still has excellent electric supplies and the world’s leading telecommunications structures. But the U.S. rating has declined to 11th place internationally due to deterioration of its roads, railroads, ports, and air transport to move goods to market and workers to their jobs.

The latest T4-America Repair Priorities 2019 report reveals that the percentage of U.S. roads nationwide in “poor condition” increased from 14 percent to 20 percent, and 37 states saw the percentage of their roads in poor condition increase from 2009-2017.

This analysis generally blames policies by individual states that neglect basic repairs in favor of expanding road miles. Due to spending flexibility offered by Congress over the last two five-year transportation reauthorization bills, states spent nearly as much money expanding the number of road miles as repairing their existing road system.

States from 2009-2017 annually spent about $21.4 billion on road repair for the nation’s 72 million public lane miles and $21.3 billion to add 223,494 lane miles. But with every new lane mile costing about $24,000 per year to keep in “good repair,” the system deteriorated and the number of lane miles in “poor repair” rose from 14 to 20 percent.

The four states of Georgia, Idaho, Nebraska, Oregon, and Tennessee scored best with only 7 percent or less roads in “poor repair”; while four states of California, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Rhode Island had the worst roads in “poor repair” at 34 percent or more.

The biggest single contributor to the deterioration of the U.S. infrastructure ratings between 2009 and 2017 was California, where the percentage of “poor repair” for its 394,383 lane miles rose from an already grim 32 percent to an abysmal 45 percent.

States tend to spend about one third of their total transportation budget on building new lane miles, a third on repair and a third on “other capital expenditures” that includes bridges, safety, engineering, traffic operations, and environmental enhancements.

California’s contribution to the U.S. increase in “poor repair” lane miles is somewhat due underfunding, with an average of just $3.9 billion in annual transportation spending between 2009-2017. But the real reason California won the prize for the largest number of lane miles in “poor repair” is due to spending almost half, 49 percent, of its transportation budget on “other capital spending.” Just 16 percent of California transportation spending went for new roads and 35 percent for road repairs.

As an example of California unique use of “other capital spending,” the Reform California movement found that 30 percent of the state’s transportation “Maintenance” Budget for San Diego County was being diverted to clean up homeless camps.

With President Trump and Congress beginning negotiations on an up to $2 trillion infrastructure spending bill, Transportation for America advocates for adopting a national “fix-it-first” formula to assure America’s infrastructure stays in good repair.”

Chriss Street is an economist and cofounder of the New California movement.

ILLEGALS & WELFARE

WE CAN’T TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN, AND YET WE LET MEXICO BUILD THEIR BILLION DOLLAR WELFARE STATE ON OUR BACKS!!!

70% OF ILLEGALS GET WELFARE!

“According to the Centers for Immigration Studies, April '11, at least 70% of Mexican illegal alien families receive some type of welfare in the US!!! cis.org”

So when cities across the country declare that they will NOT be sanctuary, guess where ALL the illegals, criminals, gang members fleeing ICE will go???? straight to your welcoming city. So ironically the people fighting for sanctuary city status, may have an unprecedented crime wave to deal with along with the additional expense.

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$17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.

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$12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English.

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$22 billion is spent on (AFDC) welfare to illegal aliens each year.

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$2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as (SNAP) food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.

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$3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.

30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens. Does not include local jails and State Prisons.

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2012 illegal aliens sent home $62 BILLION in remittances back to their countries of origin. This is why Mexico is getting involved in our politics.

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$200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.

America is a nation with a severe housing crisis, a million legals who are homeless, tens of millions of legals who have given up finding a job that pays living wages and yet the borders are wide open to keep the hordes coming simply to keep wages DEPRESSED.

With crime soaring, rampant homelessness, sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in the country and its “worst state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive government is devolving into a third-world country. JANET LEVY

With crime soaring, rampant homelessness, sanctuary state status attracting the highest illegal immigrant population in the country and its “worst state in the U.S. to do business” ranking for more than a decade, California and its expansive, debt-ridden, progressive government is devolving into a third-world country. JANET LEVY

"This is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human traffickers. These people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY

"Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein

WE SAT AND WATCHED WHILE THEY DESTROYED OUR COUNTRY!

We are now in the process of destabilizing our own country. FROSTY WOOLDRIGE

The Democrat Party’s secret agenda for wider open borders, more welfare for invading illegals, more jobs and free anything they illegally vote for…. All to destroy the two-party system and build the GLOBALISTS’ DEMOCRAT PARTY FOR WIDER OPEN BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

Demonstrably and irrefutably the Democrat Party became the party whose principle objective is to thoroughly transform the nature of the American electorate by means of open borders and the mass, unchecked importation of illiterate third world peasants who will vote in overwhelming numbers for Democrats and their La Raza welfare state. FRONTPAGE MAG

AMERICA, THE ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE STATE

“Through love of having children we're going to take over." Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96

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“The children of illegal aliens are commonly known as “anchor babies,” as they anchor their illegal alien and noncitizen parents in the U.S. There are at least 4.5 million anchor babies in the country, a population that exceeds the total number of annual American births.” JOHN BINDER

“Through love of having children we're going to take over." Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96

This annual income for an impoverished American family is $10,000 less than the more than $34,500 in federal funds which are spent on each unaccompanied minor border crosser.

A study by Tom Wong of the University of California at San Diego discovered that more than 25 percent of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens in the program have anchor babies. That totals about 200,000 anchor babies who are the children of DACA-enrolled illegal aliens. This does not include the anchor babies of DACA-qualified illegal aliens. JOHN BINDER

“As Breitbart News recently reported, there are more anchor baby births in the Los Angeles, California metro area than the total U.S. births in 14 states and the District of Colombia. Every year, American taxpayers are billed about $2.4 billion to pay for the births of illegal aliens.” JOHN BINDER

“The radicals seek nothing less than secession from the United States whether to form their own sovereign state or to reunify with Mexico. Those who desire reunification with Mexico are irredentists who seek to reclaim Mexico's "lost" territories in the American Southwest.” Maria Hsia Chang Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada Reno

"Mexican president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free medical in the United States."

"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has previously proposed ranting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added."

COST to AMERICANS of the LA RAZA MEXICAN OCCUPATION in CALIFORNIA ALONE: $2,370 per legal.

"Most Californians, who have seen their taxes increase while public services deteriorate, already know the impact that mass illegal immigration is having on their communities, but even they may be shocked when they learn just how much of a drain illegal immigration has become." FAIR President Dan Stein.

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Californians bear an enormous fiscal burden as a result of an illegal alien population estimated at almost 3 million residents. The annual expenditure of state and local tax dollars on services for that population is $25.3 billion. That total amounts to a yearly burden of about $2,370 for a household headed by a U.S. citizen.

THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES CHIPS IN MORE THAN ONE BILLION PER YEAR FOR MEX ANCHOR BABY BREEDING OF FUTURE DEMS!

AMNESTY: THE HOAX TO KEEP WAGES FOR LEGALS DEPRESSED!

"Critics argue that giving amnesty to 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. would have an immediate negative impact on America’s working and middle class — specifically black Americans and the white working class — who would be in direct competition for blue-collar jobs with the largely low-skilled illegal alien population." JOHN BINDER

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"Additionally, under current legal immigration laws, if given amnesty, the illegal alien population would be allowed to bring an unlimited number of their foreign relatives to the U.S. This population could boost already high legal immigration levels to an unprecedented high. An amnesty for illegal aliens would also likely triple the number of border-crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border." JOHN BINDER

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“At the current rate of invasion (mostly through Mexico, but also through Canada) the United States will be completely over run with illegal aliens by the year 2025. I’m not talking about legal immigrants who follow US law to become citizens. In less than 20 years, if we do not stop the invasion, ILLEGAL aliens and their offspring will be the dominant population in the United States”…. Tom Barrett

HERITAGE FOUNDATION:

AMNESTY WILL ADD ANOTHER 100 MILLION IMMIGRANTS TO AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS

“In the U.S. the remittances that come of illegal immigration drive down U.S. wages, particularly of those on the lowest-skilled parts of the ladder, and as money flows out from local communities, leaves them underinvested and run-down. Nobody can live two places at once. Illegal immigrants live here but their money lives in Mexico. And it's often untaxed.” MONICA SHOWALTER

Who ultimately really pays for all the true cost of all that "cheap" labor?

THE DEVASTATING COST OF MEXICO’S WELFARE STATE IN AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS

“The Democrats had abandoned their working-class base to chase what they pretended was a racial group when what they were actually chasing was the momentum of unlimited migration”. DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE

LA RAZA DOUBLED U.S. POPULATION AND VOTED TO SURRENDER AMERICAN BORDERS FOR EASY PLUNDERING BY NARCOMEX.

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“Through love of having children we're going to take over." Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of Brown Berets, militant para-military soldiers of Aztlan shouting at U.S. citizens at an Independence Day rally in Los Angeles, 7/4/96

“The cost of the Dream Act is far bigger than the Democrats or their media allies admit. Instead of covering 690,000 younger illegals now enrolled in former President Barack Obama’s 2012 “DACA” amnesty, the Dream Act would legalize at least 3.3 million illegals, according to a pro-immigration group, the Migration Policy Institute.”

THE NEW PRIVILEGED CLASS: Illegals!

This is why you work From Jan - May paying taxes to the government ....with the rest of the calendar year is money for you and your family.

Take, for example, an illegal alien with a wife and five children. He takes a job for $5.00 or 6.00/hour. At that wage, with six dependents, he pays no income tax, yet at the end of the year, if he files an Income Tax Return, with his fake Social Security number, he gets an "earned income credit" of up to $3,200..... free.

He qualifies for Section 8 housing and subsidized rent.

He qualifies for food stamps.

He qualifies for free (no deductible, no co-pay) health care.

His children get free breakfasts and lunches at school.

He requires bilingual teachers and books.

He qualifies for relief from high energy bills.

If they are or become, aged, blind or disabled, they qualify for SSI.

Once qualified for SSI they can qualify for Medicare. All of this is at (our) taxpayer's expense.

He doesn't worry about car insurance, life insurance, or homeowners insurance.

The recently settled teachers' strike in the Los Angeles Unified School district was a bitter dispute about resources, with class size and lack of staff support taking center stage. The tables below show that immigration's impact on the school system is enormous. Immigration has added large numbers of students to the county, but at the same time a very large share of both legal and illegal immigrants have modest levels of education and almost certainly pay less in taxes than natives who have higher levels of education and incomes. Immigration has also added significantly to the number of public-school students in the county who live in poverty and speak a language other than English at home. Overall enrollment has not increased in the district in recent years, but immigration has reduced the proportion of students whose families pay sufficient taxes to cover education costs, creating the ongoing strains on the district budget.

Although it is not possible to use Census Bureau data to look at only residents of L.A. Unified, it is possible to examine Los Angeles County to gain insight into what's happening. We identify legal and illegal immigrants based on the methodology used in this report. The data comes from the public-use files of the Census Bureau's 2012 to 2016 American Community Survey.

Among the findings for L.A. County:

·Public-school students from immigrant-headed households comprise 58 percent of public-school students in Los Angeles County (Table 2).

·Of all students in the county, 22 percent are from illegal-headed households and 36 percent are from legal immigrant households (Table 2).

·The poverty rate for students from both legal and illegal immigrant households is more than 50 percent higher than that of those from native-headed households (Table 1).

·Of students who speak a language other than English at home, 82 percent are from immigrant households — 35 percent from illegal households and 47 percent from legal households (Table 2).

·47 percent of illegal-immigrant-headed households are headed by a person who did not graduate high school; the figure is 30 percent for legal-immigrant-headed households. This compares to 7 percent of native-headed households (Table 3).

·The average income of illegal-immigrant-headed households is only 58 percent that of native-headed households; for legal-immigrant-headed households it is 79 percent of native-headed households (Table 4).

·Illegal-immigrant-headed households have three times as many students in public school on average as native-headed households; for legal-immigrant-headed households it is 50 percent higher. (Table 4).

·Illegal immigrants (ages 25-64) are more likely to hold a job (76 percent) than natives (74 percent). The rate for legal immigrants is somewhat lower at 70 percent (Table 5).

Pollak: Educating Illegal Aliens and Their Children Costs L.A. Schools Hundreds of Millions Per Year

The ongoing strike by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is about teacher pay, classroom size, support staff, and especially charter schools, which the union says take money away from the district.

Left unspoken, however, is the cost of educating illegal aliens, and their children — which could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year, if not billions, experts say.

Steven A. Camarota, director of research, at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News on Friday that “between one-fifth and one-fourth of the students in LAUSD are the children of illegal immigrants — though most of those were born in the U.S.” He said that a smaller percentage of the students (“in the single digits”) are illegal immigrants themselves.

With roughly 700,000 students in the district, at a cost of over $13,000 per student, that means the district could be spending about $1.8 billion annually on educating the children of illegal immigrants. The total annual expenses for the LAUSD in 2017-2018 amounted to $7.52 billion.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) put the cost of educating the children of illegal aliens statewide at over $12 billion in a 2014 study. A significant proportion of those students are served by the LAUSD.

Twenty years before, with a much lower population of illegal aliens, the U.S. General Accounting Office — in a study prepared for then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) estimated that California spent $1.6 billion on educating the children of illegal aliens. The cost has increased almost tenfold as the “undocumented” population has grown.

The exact numbers are elusive, but even a conservative estimate would put the costs of educating the children of illegal aliens in the LAUSD in the same ballpark as the costs of charter schools, which unions complain cost the district some $600 million per year in lost funding.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that students could not be denied a free public education on the basis of their immigration status.

However, the continued arrival of illegal aliens has arguably strained the public education system — and will continue to do so unless the country’s borders are secured.

"The public schools indoctrinate their young charges to hate this country and the rule of law. Illegal aliens continue overwhelming the state, draining California’s already depleted public services while endangering our lives, the rule of law, and public safety for all citizens."

Least-Educated State: California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School Graduates

(CNSNews.com) - California ranks No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have graduated from high school, according to new data from the Census Bureau.

Texas ranks No. 2 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 49th for the percentage who have graduated from high school.

9.7 percent of California residents 25 and older, the Census Bureau says, never completed ninth grade. Only 82.5 percent graduated from high school.

California and Texas—while having the highest percentages of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade and the lowest percentages who graduated from high school—are the nation’s two most populous states.

Massachusetts ranks No. 1 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older—42.1 percent--who have earned at least a bachelor’s degree.

These rankings are based on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 5-year estimates, which were released this month.

In the survey, the Census Bureau asks respondents to specify the level of educational attainment for each individual in their household. The question is: “What is the highest degree or level of school this person has COMPLETED. Mark (X) ONE box. If currently enrolled, mark the previous grade or highest degree received.”

The survey form then offers the respondent multiple options ranging from “no schooling completed” to “professional degree” or “doctorate degree.” If an individual has not earned a high school degree, the respondent is asked to specify the highest grade the individual actually completed—ranging from “nursery school” through “12th grade—NO DIPLOMA.”

The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey queries a random sample of more than 3.5 million U.S. households each year and publishes a one-year estimate for each year. The five-year estimate, the bureau says, “is a weighted average of the five one-year estimates.” The newly released five-year estimates are for the period from 2013 through 2017.

Nationwide, 5.4 percent of residents 25 and older have never finished ninth grade, according to the latest five-year estimates.

Nationwide, 30.9 percent of residents 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In nineteen states, the percentage with a bachelor’s degree or higher exceeds the national percentage. These nineteen states include both No. 14 California (32.6) and No. 9 New York (35.3), which respectively ranked No.1 and No. 3 for the percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade.

Another 2,033,160 California residents 25 and older completed the ninth, tenth, eleventh or twelfth grade—but did not earn a high school diploma. Thus, a total of 4,543,530 California residents 25 and older—or a nation-leading 17.5 percent--have never graduated from high school.

Is California the next Detroit?

Most Californians live within about 50 miles of its majestic coastline — for good reason. The California coastline is blessed with arguably the most desirable climate on Earth, magnificent beaches, a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and natural harbors in San Diego, Long Beach and San Francisco. There is no mystery why California’s population and economy boomed after the Second World War.

The Golden State was aptly named. Its Gold Rush of 1849 was followed a century later by massive growth in the 1950s and 60s. Education in California became the envy of the world. Stanford became the Harvard of the West. A college education at the University of California and California State University systems was inexpensive. The Community College system that fed its universities was ostensibly free.

California’s public school system led the nation in innovation and almost all of its classrooms were new. The highway system that moved California’s automobile-driven commerce eliminated the need for public transportation systems like New York and Chicago. The fertile soil of the Central Valley became the breadbasket of the world.

The next golden wave in the 1980s grew from former orchards south of San Francisco known as Silicon Valley. Intel and other companies led the world’s computer and software revolution. In the 1990s, the dot-com revolution brought immense wealth to more Californians. Its innovators, Google, Apple and others, ushered in the Internet Era. The 2000s brought the greatest housing and mortgage boom in the nation’s history, with innovation centered in Orange County. California was truly the Golden State.

Why then would the author have the temerity to ask, “When did Californians become Stupid?” And: Is California the next Detroit?

Unique oblivion

Californians, due to their golden history, live in unique oblivion. When the Tea Party movement caused a political tsunami that swept more than 60 incumbents from political office in 2010, the wave petered out at California’s state line. There was no effect on the 2010 election that saw Democrats take every elected office in the state.

California voters rejected Meg Whitman, the billionaire founder of Ebay, in favor of Jerry Brown. Gov. Brown signed into law a “high-speed rail” bill that will spend $6 billion (the state does not have) to build a train between Fresno and Bakersfield — not Los Angeles and San Francisco, as promised. There was little outcry.

California has a $16 billion deficit that no one seems to notice. Brown’s budget “assumes” that California voters will pass massive tax increases on themselves. If they do not, the 2013 deficit becomes a mind-numbing $20 billion. The budget, mandated to balance by the Calfornia Constitution, has been billions in the red for 10 straight years. How could Californians re-elect the same politicians year after year that produce budgets with multi-billion dollar deficits?

To protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a fish known better as bait, water has been diverted from the Central Valley to the Pacific Ocean. Orchards in the Central Valley have been allowed to wither and die, resulting in unemployment in the Central Valley as high as 40 percent. Imagine Californians living in what was the breadbasket of American now living on food stamps. California voters rejected Republican Carly Fiorina for U.S. Senator in 2010. She ran Hewlett Packard. Instead, they re-elected Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer ,who vowed to protect the Delta Smelt at the expense of the Central Valley.

California has 519 state agencies, like the state Blueberry Commission, that pay each of their commissioners more than $100,000 per year. State politicians, when asked to make cuts, fire teachers and fire fighters to inflict maximum pain on its citizens, while leaving these patronage commissions intact. State politicians have elevator operators in the state capital to push the buttons for them. Their solution for the overcrowding of the state’s prisons is to release inmates or transfer them to local facilities in already bankrupt cities. Yet, they are re-elected by California voters in numbers consistently higher than the old Soviet Politburo.

California’s public education system, once the envy of the world, now ranks 49th in the nation. Its business climate, according to 650 CEOs measured by Chief Executive Magazine, ranked dead last. Apple will take 3,600 new jobs to Austin, Tex. at its $280,000,000 new facility. Texas ranked first in the same survey.

California unemployment is consistently higher than 10 percent of its workforce, but it’s under-employed, according to a Gallup poll, is 20 percent. There are few jobs for college students who graduate with as much as $100,000 in student loans. Despite the overwhelming evidence that bad public policy is chasing away jobs, the same state politicians are sent back to Sacramento every two years.

In the last two months, three California cities have declared bankruptcy. Compton is next. More will follow. Some cities will simply cease to exist due to $500 million in unfunded pension obligations they simply cannot meet.

The unfunded pension obligations, now swamping California cities, were approved by these same politicians whose re-elections are financed by the unions they serve. Nine years ago, outraged Californians recalled Gov. Gray Davis from office for excessive spending and crony capitalism. Nothing has changed a decade later. Its residents believe the golden state will be golden forever. It may not be the case.

Detroit

History has an unpleasant precedent known as Detroit. In the 1950s, Detroit was a major American city with a dynamic labor force built on the manufacturing miracle that won World War II. Its factories quickly converted tanks, planes and artillery shells into trucks, automobiles and refrigerators that baby boom families demanded. Everyone had a good paying job. Detroit Iron had no competition. Its burgeoning middle class was the model of the world with excellent public schools and universities. It was the 4th largest city in America with 2 million inhabitants, with the world’s most dominant industry — the automobile.

Detroit in 2012 is a shadow of that once great metropolis. Its population has shrunk to 714,000. There are 200,000 abandoned buildings in the derelict city. The average price of a home has fallen to $5,700, unthinkable in California terms. Unemployment stands at 28.9 percent. It has a $300 million deficit. Its public education system, in receivership, is a disgrace, producing more inmates than graduates. The jobs have long ago abandoned Detroit for places like South Carolina and Alabama, far hungrier than Detroit’s leaders who believed the gravy train would never end.

In 2006, the teacher’s union forced the politicians to reject a $200 million offer from a Detroit philanthropist to build 15 new charter schools. The mayor has proposed razing 40 square miles of the 138 square miles of this once great American city, returning it to farmland. Even such a draconian plan may not be enough to save the city from itself.

If a hurricane hit Detroit, more of us would know of this tragedy in our midst, but this fate was man-made and not wrought by nature. Detroit has had one party rule for more than 50 years. Louis C. Miriani served from September 12, 1957 to January 2, 1962 as Detroit’s last Republican mayor. Since that time, the Democrats have ruled the Motor City.

John Dingell, Democrat congressman for the 15th District outside Detroit, has served since 1956. His father was the congressman there from 1930 to 1956. Despite the disastrous decline of their city, Detroit voters send him back to Congress every two years.

One-party rule

Similarly, California now has one-party rule. The Democrats of California did not need a single Republican vote to pass their budget. They now own the Golden State’s fate. The politicians’ plan to address the nation’s largest deficit is to raise taxes instead of cutting spending. If the Proposition 30 tax increase passes, the deficit would drop from $20 billion to a mere $12 billion.

Democrats have done nothing to cure the systemic problems of a bloated bureaucracy. Brown, referring to the state’s highway system, once said, “If we do not build it, they will not come.” Caltrans stopped building highways under Brown, but the people kept coming. Now 37 million Californians are locked in traffic jams each day.

Brown was rewarded for such prescience with re-election as Governor. California’s egotistical politicians passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006. Dan Sperling, an appointee to the California Air Resources Board, and a professor of engineering and environmental science at UC Davis, is the lead advocate on the board for a “low carbon fuel standard.” The powerful state agency charged with implementing AB 32 and other climate control measures claims the low carbon fuel standard will “only” raise gasoline prices $.30 gallon in 2013. But The California Political Review reported implementation of these the policies will raise prices by $1.00 per gallon.

Detroit was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the world. Will California follow Detroit down a tragic path to ruin? In 1950, no one fathomed the Detroit of 2010. In 1970, when foreign imports started to make a foothold, the unions and their bought and paid for politicians resisted any change.

In the 1990’s, as manufacturers fled to Alabama and South Carolina, the unions and their political lackeys held firm even as good jobs slipped away. No one in Detroit envisioned their future, even as schools declined, the jobs withered and the once proud city deteriorated in front of their own eyes.

No longer golden

California was once the Golden State. Today, it is no longer so golden. Its schools are in decline. Its business climate is equally dismal. Its cities are facing economic ruin, with exploding pension obligations and a declining tax base. Housing prices have fallen 30 to 60 percent across the state, evaporating trillions of dollars of equity. Unemployment remains stubbornly high and under-employment is rife. The Central Valley is in a depression, with 40 percent unemployment. Do our politicians need any more signs?

Brown’s budget will first slash money to schools and raise tuition on its students, while leaving all 519 state agencies intact. He apparently will protect political patronage at all costs. Jobs, and job creators, are fleeing the state. Intel, Apple, Google and others are expanding out of the state. The best and brightest minds are leaving for Texas and North Carolina. The signs are everywhere. State revenues are declining during many years. Meanwhile, the voters sleep and blindly send the same cast of misfits back to Sacramento each year — just as Detroit did before them.

The beaches are still beautiful. The mountains are still snow capped and the climate is still the envy of the world. Detroit never had that. But will California’s physical attributes be enough? If the people of California want to glimpse their future, they need look no farther than once proud City of Detroit. It can happen here.

Robert J Cristiano, Ph.D., is the Real Estate Professional in Residence at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. and a Senior Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco.

The recently settled teachers' strike in the Los Angeles Unified School district was a bitter dispute about resources, with class size and lack of staff support taking center stage. The tables below show that immigration's impact on the school system is enormous. Immigration has added large numbers of students to the county, but at the same time a very large share of both legal and illegal immigrants have modest levels of education and almost certainly pay less in taxes than natives who have higher levels of education and incomes. Immigration has also added significantly to the number of public-school students in the county who live in poverty and speak a language other than English at home. Overall enrollment has not increased in the district in recent years, but immigration has reduced the proportion of students whose families pay sufficient taxes to cover education costs, creating the ongoing strains on the district budget.

Although it is not possible to use Census Bureau data to look at only residents of L.A. Unified, it is possible to examine Los Angeles County to gain insight into what's happening. We identify legal and illegal immigrants based on the methodology used in this report. The data comes from the public-use files of the Census Bureau's 2012 to 2016 American Community Survey.

Among the findings for L.A. County:

·Public-school students from immigrant-headed households comprise 58 percent of public-school students in Los Angeles County (Table 2).

·Of all students in the county, 22 percent are from illegal-headed households and 36 percent are from legal immigrant households (Table 2).

·The poverty rate for students from both legal and illegal immigrant households is more than 50 percent higher than that of those from native-headed households (Table 1).

·Of students who speak a language other than English at home, 82 percent are from immigrant households — 35 percent from illegal households and 47 percent from legal households (Table 2).

·47 percent of illegal-immigrant-headed households are headed by a person who did not graduate high school; the figure is 30 percent for legal-immigrant-headed households. This compares to 7 percent of native-headed households (Table 3).

·The average income of illegal-immigrant-headed households is only 58 percent that of native-headed households; for legal-immigrant-headed households it is 79 percent of native-headed households (Table 4).

·Illegal-immigrant-headed households have three times as many students in public school on average as native-headed households; for legal-immigrant-headed households it is 50 percent higher. (Table 4).

·Illegal immigrants (ages 25-64) are more likely to hold a job (76 percent) than natives (74 percent). The rate for legal immigrants is somewhat lower at 70 percent (Table 5).

Pollak: Educating Illegal Aliens and Their Children Costs L.A. Schools Hundreds of Millions Per Year

The ongoing strike by the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is about teacher pay, classroom size, support staff, and especially charter schools, which the union says take money away from the district.

Left unspoken, however, is the cost of educating illegal aliens, and their children — which could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars per year, if not billions, experts say.

Steven A. Camarota, director of research, at the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News on Friday that “between one-fifth and one-fourth of the students in LAUSD are the children of illegal immigrants — though most of those were born in the U.S.” He said that a smaller percentage of the students (“in the single digits”) are illegal immigrants themselves.

With roughly 700,000 students in the district, at a cost of over $13,000 per student, that means the district could be spending about $1.8 billion annually on educating the children of illegal immigrants. The total annual expenses for the LAUSD in 2017-2018 amounted to $7.52 billion.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) put the cost of educating the children of illegal aliens statewide at over $12 billion in a 2014 study. A significant proportion of those students are served by the LAUSD.

Twenty years before, with a much lower population of illegal aliens, the U.S. General Accounting Office — in a study prepared for then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) estimated that California spent $1.6 billion on educating the children of illegal aliens. The cost has increased almost tenfold as the “undocumented” population has grown.

The exact numbers are elusive, but even a conservative estimate would put the costs of educating the children of illegal aliens in the LAUSD in the same ballpark as the costs of charter schools, which unions complain cost the district some $600 million per year in lost funding.

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Plyler v. Doe (1982) that students could not be denied a free public education on the basis of their immigration status.

However, the continued arrival of illegal aliens has arguably strained the public education system — and will continue to do so unless the country’s borders are secured.

"The public schools indoctrinate their young charges to hate this country and the rule of law. Illegal aliens continue overwhelming the state, draining California’s already depleted public services while endangering our lives, the rule of law, and public safety for all citizens."

Least-Educated State: California No. 1 in Percentage of Residents 25 and Older Who Never Finished 9th Grade; No. 50 in High School Graduates

(CNSNews.com) - California ranks No. 1 among the 50 states for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 50th for the percentage who have graduated from high school, according to new data from the Census Bureau.

Texas ranks No. 2 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older who have never completed ninth grade and 49th for the percentage who have graduated from high school.

9.7 percent of California residents 25 and older, the Census Bureau says, never completed ninth grade. Only 82.5 percent graduated from high school.

California and Texas—while having the highest percentages of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade and the lowest percentages who graduated from high school—are the nation’s two most populous states.

Massachusetts ranks No. 1 for the percentage of its residents 25 and older—42.1 percent--who have earned at least a bachelor’s degree.

These rankings are based on data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 5-year estimates, which were released this month.

In the survey, the Census Bureau asks respondents to specify the level of educational attainment for each individual in their household. The question is: “What is the highest degree or level of school this person has COMPLETED. Mark (X) ONE box. If currently enrolled, mark the previous grade or highest degree received.”

The survey form then offers the respondent multiple options ranging from “no schooling completed” to “professional degree” or “doctorate degree.” If an individual has not earned a high school degree, the respondent is asked to specify the highest grade the individual actually completed—ranging from “nursery school” through “12th grade—NO DIPLOMA.”

The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey queries a random sample of more than 3.5 million U.S. households each year and publishes a one-year estimate for each year. The five-year estimate, the bureau says, “is a weighted average of the five one-year estimates.” The newly released five-year estimates are for the period from 2013 through 2017.

Nationwide, 5.4 percent of residents 25 and older have never finished ninth grade, according to the latest five-year estimates.

Nationwide, 30.9 percent of residents 25 and older have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

In nineteen states, the percentage with a bachelor’s degree or higher exceeds the national percentage. These nineteen states include both No. 14 California (32.6) and No. 9 New York (35.3), which respectively ranked No.1 and No. 3 for the percentage of residents 25 and older who never finished ninth grade.

Another 2,033,160 California residents 25 and older completed the ninth, tenth, eleventh or twelfth grade—but did not earn a high school diploma. Thus, a total of 4,543,530 California residents 25 and older—or a nation-leading 17.5 percent--have never graduated from high school.

Is California the next Detroit?

Most Californians live within about 50 miles of its majestic coastline — for good reason. The California coastline is blessed with arguably the most desirable climate on Earth, magnificent beaches, a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and natural harbors in San Diego, Long Beach and San Francisco. There is no mystery why California’s population and economy boomed after the Second World War.

The Golden State was aptly named. Its Gold Rush of 1849 was followed a century later by massive growth in the 1950s and 60s. Education in California became the envy of the world. Stanford became the Harvard of the West. A college education at the University of California and California State University systems was inexpensive. The Community College system that fed its universities was ostensibly free.

California’s public school system led the nation in innovation and almost all of its classrooms were new. The highway system that moved California’s automobile-driven commerce eliminated the need for public transportation systems like New York and Chicago. The fertile soil of the Central Valley became the breadbasket of the world.

The next golden wave in the 1980s grew from former orchards south of San Francisco known as Silicon Valley. Intel and other companies led the world’s computer and software revolution. In the 1990s, the dot-com revolution brought immense wealth to more Californians. Its innovators, Google, Apple and others, ushered in the Internet Era. The 2000s brought the greatest housing and mortgage boom in the nation’s history, with innovation centered in Orange County. California was truly the Golden State.

Why then would the author have the temerity to ask, “When did Californians become Stupid?” And: Is California the next Detroit?

Unique oblivion

Californians, due to their golden history, live in unique oblivion. When the Tea Party movement caused a political tsunami that swept more than 60 incumbents from political office in 2010, the wave petered out at California’s state line. There was no effect on the 2010 election that saw Democrats take every elected office in the state.

California voters rejected Meg Whitman, the billionaire founder of Ebay, in favor of Jerry Brown. Gov. Brown signed into law a “high-speed rail” bill that will spend $6 billion (the state does not have) to build a train between Fresno and Bakersfield — not Los Angeles and San Francisco, as promised. There was little outcry.

California has a $16 billion deficit that no one seems to notice. Brown’s budget “assumes” that California voters will pass massive tax increases on themselves. If they do not, the 2013 deficit becomes a mind-numbing $20 billion. The budget, mandated to balance by the Calfornia Constitution, has been billions in the red for 10 straight years. How could Californians re-elect the same politicians year after year that produce budgets with multi-billion dollar deficits?

To protect the endangered Delta Smelt, a fish known better as bait, water has been diverted from the Central Valley to the Pacific Ocean. Orchards in the Central Valley have been allowed to wither and die, resulting in unemployment in the Central Valley as high as 40 percent. Imagine Californians living in what was the breadbasket of American now living on food stamps. California voters rejected Republican Carly Fiorina for U.S. Senator in 2010. She ran Hewlett Packard. Instead, they re-elected Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer ,who vowed to protect the Delta Smelt at the expense of the Central Valley.

California has 519 state agencies, like the state Blueberry Commission, that pay each of their commissioners more than $100,000 per year. State politicians, when asked to make cuts, fire teachers and fire fighters to inflict maximum pain on its citizens, while leaving these patronage commissions intact. State politicians have elevator operators in the state capital to push the buttons for them. Their solution for the overcrowding of the state’s prisons is to release inmates or transfer them to local facilities in already bankrupt cities. Yet, they are re-elected by California voters in numbers consistently higher than the old Soviet Politburo.

California’s public education system, once the envy of the world, now ranks 49th in the nation. Its business climate, according to 650 CEOs measured by Chief Executive Magazine, ranked dead last. Apple will take 3,600 new jobs to Austin, Tex. at its $280,000,000 new facility. Texas ranked first in the same survey.

California unemployment is consistently higher than 10 percent of its workforce, but it’s under-employed, according to a Gallup poll, is 20 percent. There are few jobs for college students who graduate with as much as $100,000 in student loans. Despite the overwhelming evidence that bad public policy is chasing away jobs, the same state politicians are sent back to Sacramento every two years.

In the last two months, three California cities have declared bankruptcy. Compton is next. More will follow. Some cities will simply cease to exist due to $500 million in unfunded pension obligations they simply cannot meet.

The unfunded pension obligations, now swamping California cities, were approved by these same politicians whose re-elections are financed by the unions they serve. Nine years ago, outraged Californians recalled Gov. Gray Davis from office for excessive spending and crony capitalism. Nothing has changed a decade later. Its residents believe the golden state will be golden forever. It may not be the case.

Detroit

History has an unpleasant precedent known as Detroit. In the 1950s, Detroit was a major American city with a dynamic labor force built on the manufacturing miracle that won World War II. Its factories quickly converted tanks, planes and artillery shells into trucks, automobiles and refrigerators that baby boom families demanded. Everyone had a good paying job. Detroit Iron had no competition. Its burgeoning middle class was the model of the world with excellent public schools and universities. It was the 4th largest city in America with 2 million inhabitants, with the world’s most dominant industry — the automobile.

Detroit in 2012 is a shadow of that once great metropolis. Its population has shrunk to 714,000. There are 200,000 abandoned buildings in the derelict city. The average price of a home has fallen to $5,700, unthinkable in California terms. Unemployment stands at 28.9 percent. It has a $300 million deficit. Its public education system, in receivership, is a disgrace, producing more inmates than graduates. The jobs have long ago abandoned Detroit for places like South Carolina and Alabama, far hungrier than Detroit’s leaders who believed the gravy train would never end.

In 2006, the teacher’s union forced the politicians to reject a $200 million offer from a Detroit philanthropist to build 15 new charter schools. The mayor has proposed razing 40 square miles of the 138 square miles of this once great American city, returning it to farmland. Even such a draconian plan may not be enough to save the city from itself.

If a hurricane hit Detroit, more of us would know of this tragedy in our midst, but this fate was man-made and not wrought by nature. Detroit has had one party rule for more than 50 years. Louis C. Miriani served from September 12, 1957 to January 2, 1962 as Detroit’s last Republican mayor. Since that time, the Democrats have ruled the Motor City.

John Dingell, Democrat congressman for the 15th District outside Detroit, has served since 1956. His father was the congressman there from 1930 to 1956. Despite the disastrous decline of their city, Detroit voters send him back to Congress every two years.

One-party rule

Similarly, California now has one-party rule. The Democrats of California did not need a single Republican vote to pass their budget. They now own the Golden State’s fate. The politicians’ plan to address the nation’s largest deficit is to raise taxes instead of cutting spending. If the Proposition 30 tax increase passes, the deficit would drop from $20 billion to a mere $12 billion.

Democrats have done nothing to cure the systemic problems of a bloated bureaucracy. Brown, referring to the state’s highway system, once said, “If we do not build it, they will not come.” Caltrans stopped building highways under Brown, but the people kept coming. Now 37 million Californians are locked in traffic jams each day.

Brown was rewarded for such prescience with re-election as Governor. California’s egotistical politicians passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006. Dan Sperling, an appointee to the California Air Resources Board, and a professor of engineering and environmental science at UC Davis, is the lead advocate on the board for a “low carbon fuel standard.” The powerful state agency charged with implementing AB 32 and other climate control measures claims the low carbon fuel standard will “only” raise gasoline prices $.30 gallon in 2013. But The California Political Review reported implementation of these the policies will raise prices by $1.00 per gallon.

Detroit was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the world. Will California follow Detroit down a tragic path to ruin? In 1950, no one fathomed the Detroit of 2010. In 1970, when foreign imports started to make a foothold, the unions and their bought and paid for politicians resisted any change.

In the 1990’s, as manufacturers fled to Alabama and South Carolina, the unions and their political lackeys held firm even as good jobs slipped away. No one in Detroit envisioned their future, even as schools declined, the jobs withered and the once proud city deteriorated in front of their own eyes.

No longer golden

California was once the Golden State. Today, it is no longer so golden. Its schools are in decline. Its business climate is equally dismal. Its cities are facing economic ruin, with exploding pension obligations and a declining tax base. Housing prices have fallen 30 to 60 percent across the state, evaporating trillions of dollars of equity. Unemployment remains stubbornly high and under-employment is rife. The Central Valley is in a depression, with 40 percent unemployment. Do our politicians need any more signs?

Brown’s budget will first slash money to schools and raise tuition on its students, while leaving all 519 state agencies intact. He apparently will protect political patronage at all costs. Jobs, and job creators, are fleeing the state. Intel, Apple, Google and others are expanding out of the state. The best and brightest minds are leaving for Texas and North Carolina. The signs are everywhere. State revenues are declining during many years. Meanwhile, the voters sleep and blindly send the same cast of misfits back to Sacramento each year — just as Detroit did before them.

The beaches are still beautiful. The mountains are still snow capped and the climate is still the envy of the world. Detroit never had that. But will California’s physical attributes be enough? If the people of California want to glimpse their future, they need look no farther than once proud City of Detroit. It can happen here.

Robert J Cristiano, Ph.D., is the Real Estate Professional in Residence at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. and a Senior Fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco.

America needs well-enforced borders but President Donald Trump’s national “emergency” is part of a much larger crisis facing Western nations.

State entropy, widespread violence and economic desperation, prevalent in many parts of Central and South America, the Middle East and Africa, are driving millions north—mostly to America and the European Union. The sheer potential numbers could pose overwhelming challenges of assimilation and undermine the cultural underpinnings of our market economies and democratic institutions.

The recent sharp increase in Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal migrants and asylum seekers has exhausted U.S. recourses to detain those awaiting adjudication. Within several weeks of apprehension, they join 11 million immigrantswithout permanent legal status—driving down wages for lower-paid Americans and overwhelming local cultures in some of the nation’s poorest communities.

Sophisticated technologies—cameras, drones and the like—are more cost efficient than a wall, but only a wall could keep migrants from setting foot on American soil and being released into the general population.

Sadly, federal courts led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts have become quite comfortable arrogating power in response to public sentiment—for example, striking down state statutes prohibiting gay marriage—and acceding to political pressure from Democrats—the peculiar reasoning Roberts applied to declare Affordable Care Act fines are taxes.

Presidential claims about “Obama Judges” and “Trump Judges” have some merit but in any case, Trump’s immigration point man, Stephen Miller, has not done the homework to effectively argue that a national emergency exists.

Trump charges the illegal flood is full of criminals, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, always a comforting presence, counters that Americans commit rape, robbery and homicide too. What matters is whether poor immigrants commit crimes at an alarming higher rate that our indigenous population.

Since 2015, Germany has admitted over 1.4 million asylum seekers—about 2% of its population, and they commit about 14% of the crimes. Surely, the FBI could help Miller to come up with comparable U.S. statistics. Then we could get at the truth—or he has but the administration is not willing to back off on its crime claims.

The 1976 National Emergency Act empowers a majority in the Congress to nullify presidential declarations. However, with the GOP holding the Senate, lawsuits will decide whether the president can supplement the $1.4 billion authorized by Congress to build 55 miles of border fence by transferring Department of Defense funds to instead build 234 miles of fence.

The NEA does not define a national emergency. Instead that is spread over at least 470 statutory provisions. One states “the Secretary of Defense can ‘undertake military construction projects … necessary to support such use of the armed forces.’”

As Justice Robert Jackson reminded in Youngstown v. Sawyer (1952), which overturned President Harry Truman’s nationalization of the steel industry to support the Korean War effort, presidential discretion is at its peak when it acts with the support of Congress and “at its lowest ebb” when it is “incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress.”

When the Republicans controlled Congress, Trump could not get his wall built, and he campaigned on the issue in 2018 and got shellacked. Now congressional House Democrats have decided there is no pressing need for a wall.

The president recognizes he will get pilloried in the lower courts but expects a fair hearing in the Supreme Court. He should ponder Roberts’s ire regarding his charges about the politicization of the courts—sometimes being right is not enough.

For Americans living in large prosperous cities, the influx of well-educated legal immigrants, especially in STEM disciplines, are welcome, but many illegal immigrants become burdens in the labor markets and on public services in Trump country.

If Trump fails to get his wall, the crisis at the border could easily become a mass migration that imposes incalculable burdens on those Americans least able to bear them.

Gaffney: 'You Can't Assimilate Vast Numbers of People Who Don’t Want to be Part' of U.S.A.

During a discussion about the need for immigrants to assimilate into American society and the spectre of sharia (Islamic law) in U.S. communities, Center for Security Policy Chairman Frank Gaffney said it is imperative to keep in mind "that you cannot assimilate vast numbers of people who simply don’t want to be part of your society." Gaffney, a former assistant secretary for Defense in the Reagan administration, added that Judge Jeanine Pirro is being suppressed because she dared to ask a question about the origins of the anti-Israel views expressed by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

When asked about assimilation during a March 20 interview on Breitbart News Daily, Gaffney said to host Alex Marlow, This topic "reminds me of the old story that conservatives are liberals who’ve been mugged by reality, and the thing you're describing, Alex, is being mugged by the reality that you cannot assimilate vast numbers of people who simply don’t want to be part of your society."

"They want to transform it into something very different and ultimately, at some point, you either resist or you submit," he said. "Submission is going to be pretty ugly, and it’s happening in parts of Europe already, and there’s more in the offing, I’m afraid. [Garbled] This rising tide of sharia supremacism, it’s chilling.”

He continued, "The trouble is, it’s not simply a problem in its own right, it’s a foretaste of what the Ilhan Omars and the Keith Ellisons and the André Carsons, Rashida Tlaibs, and so on, would have in mind for America, too, if they had their way. This is the really vexing problem of our time.”

“Again, not all Muslims want to live under sharia," said Gaffney. "They don’t want to impose it on the rest of us. But enough of them do and the authorities of the [Islamic] faith certainly do."

As for Judge Jeanine Pirro, whose program on the Fox News Channel has been suspended for a second week, Gaffney said, "Jeanine Pirro, who is a friend of mine and much-admired former public servant and now, extraordinary resource, on her program, Justice w/Judge Jeanine, was suspended last week and may be again this week, and maybe – who knows – indefinitely."

Jeanine Pirro. (Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)

“The faux-Fox [News Channel] is suppressing Jeanine Pirro explicitly – as you know, Alex – because she dared, even in a question, to connect the dots between what Ilhan Omar is doing with anti-Semitism, on the one hand, and the traditions, teachings, and practices of sharia, as we’ve come to know it," said Gaffney.

On her March 9 program, Jeanine Pirro said, “This is not who your party is" in reference to the Democrat Party. “Your party is not anti-Israel, [Omar] is. Think about this. She’s not getting this anti-Israel sentiment doctrine from the Democrat Party. So if it’s not rooted in the party, where is she getting it from? Think about it. Omar wears a hijab, which according to the Quran 33:59, tells women to cover so they won’t get molested."

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“Is her adherence to this Islamic doctrine indicative of her adherence to sharia law, which in itself is antithetical to the United States Constitution?” said Pirro.

Comments and tweets made by Rep. Omar have been condemned by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as "anti-Semitic" and "deeply offensive."

MULTI-CULTURALISM and the creation of a one-party globalist country to serve the rich in America’s open borders.

“Open border advocates, such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, claim illegal aliens are a net benefit to California with little evidence to support such an assertion. As the CIS has documented, the vast majority of illegals are poor, uneducated, and with few skills. How does accepting millions of illegal aliens and then granting them access to dozens of welfare programs benefit California’s economy? If illegals were contributing to the economy in any meaningful way, CA, with its 2.6 million illegals, would be booming.” STEVE BALDWIN – AMERICAN SPECTATOR

The US should think long and hard about the high number of Latino immigrants.

By Lawrence Harrison

It's not just a short-run issue of immigrants competing with citizens for jobs as unemployment approaches 10 percent or the number of uninsured straining the quality of healthcare. Heavy immigration from Latin America threatens our cohesiveness as a nation.

MEXICO WILL DOUBLE U.S. POPULATION

By Tom Barrett

At the current rate of invasion (mostly through Mexico, but also through Canada) the United States will be completely over run with illegal aliens by the year 2025. I’m not talking about legal immigrants who follow US law to become citizens. In less than 20 years, if we do not stop the invasion, ILLEGAL aliens and their offspring will be the dominant population in the United States.

FINISHING AMERICA OFF: THE FOREIGN INVASION FOR “CHEAP” LABOR

Open the floodgates of our welfare state to the uneducated, impoverished, and unskilled masses of the world and in a generation or three America, as we know it, will be gone. JOHN BINDER

But many less-skilled migrants play their largest role by simply shifting small slices of wealth from person to person, for example, by competing up rents in their neighborhood or by competing down wages in their workplace. The crudest examples can be seen in agriculture.

"Critics argue that giving amnesty to 12 to 30 million illegal aliens in the U.S. would have an immediate negative impact on America’s working and middle class — specifically black Americans and the white working class — who would be in direct competition for blue-collar jobs with the largely low-skilled illegal alien population." JOHN BINDER

The U.S.-born baby is, of course, a U.S. citizen, whose illegal alien parents are eligible to receive, on the baby’s behalf, food stamps, nutrition from the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, and numerous tax benefits, including the EITC.

Most importantly, the newborn is deportation insurance for its parents. Illegal aliens facing deportation can argue that to deport one or more parents would create an “extreme hardship” for the new baby. If an immigration officer agrees, we’ve added a new adult to the nation’s population. At age 21 the former birthright citizen baby can formally apply for green cards for parents and siblings, and they, in turn, can start their own immigration chains.

Mounting Disorder in San Francisco

Erica Sandberg joins City Journal associate editor Seth Barron to discuss the deteriorating state of public order in San Francisco.

The Bay Area’s most densely populated and desirable neighborhoods are being destroyed by lawlessness and squalor. San Francisco now leads the nation in property crime, according to the FBI. “Other low-level offenses,” Sandberg reports for City Journal, “including drug dealing, street harassment, encampments, indecent exposure, public intoxication, simple assault, and disorderly conduct are also rampant.”

With the situation growing more dire, residents are organizing to demand that the city take action against repeat offenders and strengthen quality-of-life laws. It remains to be seen whether the city will change its approach to public safety. “Meantime,” Sandberg writes, “the poor bear the brunt of low-level and property crimes.”

Audio Transcript

Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Coming up on today's show, our associate editor, Seth Barron, talks with one of our newest writers, Erica Sandberg, who's based in San Francisco. Last year, the FBI confirmed what visitors and residents of the Bay Area have come to know all too well: disorder is metastasizing in that city. San Francisco is infamous for its filth, its homeless encampments. Drug use in broad daylight is is now disturbingly common. Stores are closing in some of the city's historic neighborhoods and San Francisco is now the nation's leader in property crime. City Journal has done a lot of reporting recently on the growing levels of disorder in some of our nation's biggest cities. Erica's work in San Francisco, mirrors what Chris Rufo has reported on in Seattle and Andy Ngo and Michael Totten in Portland. Here in New York, though it's not quite as bad as it is in these west coast cities, there's a concerted effort to reduce the kind of public order enforcement that has made the city so successful. But back to Erica, her latest piece in City Journal, "San Francisco's Quality-of-Life Toll," blew up on social media last week, so we asked her to call in to the studio and give us a report on the podcast. I'm sure our listeners will enjoy it. Lastly, we announced this on last week's episode, but if you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at podcastat@city-journal.org that's podcast@city-journal.org. That's it from me. The conversation between Seth Barron and Erica Sandberg begins after this.

Seth Barron: Welcome back to 10 Blocks, the podcast of CityJournal. This is your host for today, Seth Barron, associate editor at City Journal. Erica Sandberg is a writer and noted expert on consumer finance and a long-term resident of San Francisco. She's been writing for City Journal recently about problems with homelessness and crime in San Francisco. Her most recent piece, "San Francisco's Quality-of-Life Toll," addresses the rise in public disorder in one of the jewels among America's cities. Thanks for joining us, Erica.

Erica Sandberg: Thank you so much for having me.

Seth Barron: Now, are you a native of San Francisco-- did I mischaracterize your presence there-- or just a long term resident?

Erica Sandberg: Practically native? I've been here for over 30 years, about 31 years now.

Seth Barron: Okay. Well, San Francisco's always had a gritty, bohemian edge, but what's happening now in the city sounds qualitatively different. Is it?

Erica Sandberg: It absolutely is. We've experienced a major downturn in the quality of life: crime and filth and many different problems within the past five to 10 years. Ten years is kind of stretching it, but in the past five years we've really seen an explosion in some pretty bad things that are happening here.

Seth Barron: Well, like what?

Erica Sandberg: Well, a lot of people call it homelessness, which is this umbrella term that I don't like to use, although we see the effects of it-- we're seeing people out on the sidewalks, in the streets, in the parks, and it's very much in your face, you can't escape it-- but what really is the problem is the underlying issue that's causing people to be there. And there are two major issues that we're really seeing. One is the increased drug use is just really off the charts, it's just off the charts, but the other is mental illness that you often see. The two go very much hand in hand, and right now it is impossible for anybody to not see. So you can't really get around it now.

Seth Barron: So are there people camping out on the streets? Is that the problem, are there encampments?

Erica Sandberg: Yeah, it's interesting. There has been a change in straight up encampments, so I can't miss when you see these massive tent cities that we were seeing a lot of-- we saw them under the freeway, and we saw them in certain areas of the city-- and they've been kind of busted up to a certain extent, which sounds kind of violent, but that's not really what it is. The police have come and they said 'you can't have an encampment,' so the people just sort of disperse. So instead of having these homeless communities in just little areas, in the pockets, you're seeing them all over the city and in areas that we never saw people before in that way. So, I think it's really alarming to a lot of visitors and certainly a lot of people who live here thinking, 'oh, now what have we done? What, what is going on and how can we change things?

Seth Barron: One thing that's gotten some press and it's become kind of infamous, are these "poop maps" or something. People saying that there's a lot of human waste scattered all over the ground. Is this true?

Erica Sandberg: Yeah, it is true. And I've got to hand it to the people who are on top of it because they're doing a really filthy job. They're literally going out there with their cameras and taking pictures of what they see and what they experience. Most of that is happening in certain neighborhoods, but it's all over. If you go check out the poop maps, it's kind of wild because it's everywhere and we don't have public restrooms and hey, we're humans. We're living, breathing things, and we do have to go, and with the sheer number of people who are living on the streets, it's not surprising.

Seth Barron: So what are the estimates of how many people are living on the streets?

Erica Sandberg: Totally depends on who you ask. So, right now the estimate is around 8,200 people who are living on the street. So we're not talking about people who are living in single room occupancy hotels or doing that couch surfing thing or in their cars or RVs. We're talking straight up homeless people. So that's a lot of people for a relatively small city. We only have just shy of 900,000 people who live here in a small space, so it's very concentrated.

Seth Barron: Yeah, that's about double the number of people living on the streets in New York City, which has 10 times the number of people. So I could see that that's a significant issue.

Erica Sandberg: Yeah, and as I say, it does depend on who you ask for those figures. So those are the latest figures from I believe the Department of Housing and Social Services or whatever the name of that department is-- seems to change all the time. The Coalition on Homelessness, which is an advocacy group will estimate it at much, much higher and there are some pretty good reasons they're coming up with those high numbers. So, as I say, it really depends on who is delivering that information.

Seth Barron: Oh, so 8,200 is actually a conservative figure? It could be higher.

Erica Sandberg: Correct. I have heard the leaders of this organization say, 'oh no, it's more like 23,000.' So you're looking at these bloated numbers. And let's face it, the more people that you say are out and about as vagrants, or wherever you want to call them, the more money they're going to be asking for.

Seth Barron: Oh, I see. So is crime an issue in San Francisco? Because I understand California has changed the way it deals with theft and misdemeanors in terms of arrests and prosecutions. So what's happened with low-level crime in San Francisco? Is it a growing issue?

Erica Sandberg: It's become absolutely out of control. You're right Seth. It was Proposition 47, which was passed a number of years ago for California, and what it did is that it switched out crimes that were once considered felonies and they're now considered misdemeanors. So when you have that vast reduction in what they are considered, you can't. . . Here, let me give you an example. So a property theft of an item that's worth less than $950 is no longer a felony. It used to be. It used to be around $340 something dollars, so anything above that was considered a felony. So now this ceiling, the threshold has reached almost $1,000, which now puts property at risk that you would think would be a major crime. So, for example, you're out at a cafe and someone takes your laptop, it's a misdemeanor. Does that or does it not give you, as a thief, the impetus to go out and grab somebody's laptop? Of course it does. The slap on the wrist is going to be very, very light, if at all. So we have seen an explosion in these types of property crimes, which extends to car break-ins, people grabbing cell phones on BART trains, any kind of theft that you might see that seems like it's not going to be this huge smash and grab in a major jewelry store kind of thing. It's a low-level crime. It's nothing.

Seth Barron: So how small businesses responded to this?

Erica Sandberg: Oh, it's terrible for small businesses. They have absolutely been inundated with these thieves who will come and grab stuff and then walk out the door, and some are so bold. I'm constantly going to my Safeway and saying, 'how's it going today? Who came in here and took what?' Like, 'yeah, it was at 8 o'clock in the morning, somebody came in and they cleared out the meat department.' It's not hard to find people who have been impacted, whether it's the small business owner, these mom-and-pop shops that are just trying desperately to survive, to major operations like Safeway and Macy's, where theft has skyrocketed.

Seth Barron: That's frightening. So how has the city responded to this? I assume the elected officials are fighting back and trying to curtail this, right?

Erica Sandberg: Well, you would think. Again, it depends on which department you're looking at. Of course the SFPD has been trying desperately to keep up with it because people are making the calls, they have to respond. So they are the ones on the front lines. They're like, 'okay, well, somebody just called because their car was broken into, or somebody stole their cell phone right out of their hands is they were waiting for their Uber.' They've got to respond, but their hands are tied, so there's only so much they can do. Regarding supervisors and the mayor, they have absolutely fallen short on clamping down on this and it's appalling. And so much of it is driven by two key factors. One is organized crime, which can be small, these little tiny groups of organized criminals, and the other one is drug crimes. And that also was majorly impacted by the passage of Proposition 47 because it essentially said, 'hey, drug use, if you're carrying drugs that are for your personal use up to a certain amount--' and it kind of depends on each type of drug-- 'it's not a felony anymore, it's a misdemeanor.' So it's increased the drug dealing in neighborhoods because so many people can access their drugs, it's easier. And so you're seeing these overlapping crimes. People who need money for their drug use are going to certainly be the ones who are very often on the street, they're not employed. So how are they going to get the money? You can do the math. So the city officials are not taking that type of crime seriously at all.

Seth Barron: So is there a growing resistance to this? How do people feel about it? There's an election this November. Are they going to turn out the mayor or is it going to be more of the same?

Erica Sandberg: What I absolutely love, and this is what's so exciting right now, is that we are seeing this groundswell of people in San Francisco who are done, they are absolutely 100% done with the status quo. So, liberal, conservative, it crosses boundaries. Politics has nothing to do with it. Quality of life has everything to do with it. So yes, we are seeing more people from all over, from all walks of life, say this administration and the way it's being run is, is done. It's over. And it's really, really exciting. So yes, we're definitely seeing a lot of people who are more than willing to overturn what we have right now. The problem is, we don't have many people who are willing to step up and do the job. So you can not elect Mayor Breed, but who was in her place? So right now there are no strong contenders because we don't really have anybody who can step up and say, okay, I'm going to do things differently.

Seth Barron: That's a shame. You wrote a piece for us on what you called "harm production." What did you mean by that?

Erica Sandberg: Well, it's kind of play on harm reduction, which is this theory that instead of helping people off drugs and really putting your attention into things like rehabilitation centers and cracking down on drug crimes, we're just going to help people stay on drugs. And that's really what it is, stay on the substance of their choice, make it safe, make it so the needles are there, they're clean, that people can have immediate access to them. But it's not just with needles, it's also meth pipes, it's also straws that you can use for snorting, which is really hilarious of course, because straws are outlawed here in San Francisco if you're going to use them for a beverage. But the whole premise of it is let's make it clean, safe, accessible so that people can maybe, if they really want to, pursue a life that's free of drugs. But so far we haven't seen that manifest. So it's really bizarre and safe injection sites are part of this. We don't have them yet, there's a huge push for them, and I'm completely opposed to it.

Seth Barron: Yeah, those are coming here, too, in New York.

Erica Sandberg: Are they?

Seth Barron: Well, that's the plan, anyway. It's not clear when or where precisely, but there are advocates for it. Erica, this was a sobering discussion. We'd like to hear your comments about today's episode on Twitter at @CityJournal #10blocks. If you like our show and want to hear more of it, please leave ratings and reviews on iTunes. This is your host, Seth Barron. Erica Sandberg. Thank you so much for joining us.

Erica Sandberg: Thank you so much for having me.US now has more Spanish speakers than Spain – only Mexico has more

The Bay Area’s most densely populated and desirable neighborhoods are being destroyed by lawlessness and squalor. San Francisco now leads the nation in property crime, according to the FBI. “Other low-level offenses,” Sandberg reports for City Journal, “including drug dealing, street harassment, encampments, indecent exposure, public intoxication, simple assault, and disorderly conduct are also rampant.”

With the situation growing more dire, residents are organizing to demand that the city take action against repeat offenders and strengthen quality-of-life laws. It remains to be seen whether the city will change its approach to public safety. “Meantime,” Sandberg writes, “the poor bear the brunt of low-level and property crimes.”

Audio Transcript

Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Coming up on today's show, our associate editor, Seth Barron, talks with one of our newest writers, Erica Sandberg, who's based in San Francisco. Last year, the FBI confirmed what visitors and residents of the Bay Area have come to know all too well: disorder is metastasizing in that city. San Francisco is infamous for its filth, its homeless encampments. Drug use in broad daylight is is now disturbingly common. Stores are closing in some of the city's historic neighborhoods and San Francisco is now the nation's leader in property crime. City Journal has done a lot of reporting recently on the growing levels of disorder in some of our nation's biggest cities. Erica's work in San Francisco, mirrors what Chris Rufo has reported on in Seattle and Andy Ngo and Michael Totten in Portland. Here in New York, though it's not quite as bad as it is in these west coast cities, there's a concerted effort to reduce the kind of public order enforcement that has made the city so successful. But back to Erica, her latest piece in City Journal, "San Francisco's Quality-of-Life Toll," blew up on social media last week, so we asked her to call in to the studio and give us a report on the podcast. I'm sure our listeners will enjoy it. Lastly, we announced this on last week's episode, but if you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at podcastat@city-journal.org that's podcast@city-journal.org. That's it from me. The conversation between Seth Barron and Erica Sandberg begins after this.

Seth Barron: Welcome back to 10 Blocks, the podcast of CityJournal. This is your host for today, Seth Barron, associate editor at City Journal. Erica Sandberg is a writer and noted expert on consumer finance and a long-term resident of San Francisco. She's been writing for City Journal recently about problems with homelessness and crime in San Francisco. Her most recent piece, "San Francisco's Quality-of-Life Toll," addresses the rise in public disorder in one of the jewels among America's cities. Thanks for joining us, Erica.

Erica Sandberg: Thank you so much for having me.

Seth Barron: Now, are you a native of San Francisco-- did I mischaracterize your presence there-- or just a long term resident?

Erica Sandberg: Practically native? I've been here for over 30 years, about 31 years now.

Seth Barron: Okay. Well, San Francisco's always had a gritty, bohemian edge, but what's happening now in the city sounds qualitatively different. Is it?

Erica Sandberg: It absolutely is. We've experienced a major downturn in the quality of life: crime and filth and many different problems within the past five to 10 years. Ten years is kind of stretching it, but in the past five years we've really seen an explosion in some pretty bad things that are happening here.

Seth Barron: Well, like what?

Erica Sandberg: Well, a lot of people call it homelessness, which is this umbrella term that I don't like to use, although we see the effects of it-- we're seeing people out on the sidewalks, in the streets, in the parks, and it's very much in your face, you can't escape it-- but what really is the problem is the underlying issue that's causing people to be there. And there are two major issues that we're really seeing. One is the increased drug use is just really off the charts, it's just off the charts, but the other is mental illness that you often see. The two go very much hand in hand, and right now it is impossible for anybody to not see. So you can't really get around it now.

Seth Barron: So are there people camping out on the streets? Is that the problem, are there encampments?

Erica Sandberg: Yeah, it's interesting. There has been a change in straight up encampments, so I can't miss when you see these massive tent cities that we were seeing a lot of-- we saw them under the freeway, and we saw them in certain areas of the city-- and they've been kind of busted up to a certain extent, which sounds kind of violent, but that's not really what it is. The police have come and they said 'you can't have an encampment,' so the people just sort of disperse. So instead of having these homeless communities in just little areas, in the pockets, you're seeing them all over the city and in areas that we never saw people before in that way. So, I think it's really alarming to a lot of visitors and certainly a lot of people who live here thinking, 'oh, now what have we done? What, what is going on and how can we change things?

Seth Barron: One thing that's gotten some press and it's become kind of infamous, are these "poop maps" or something. People saying that there's a lot of human waste scattered all over the ground. Is this true?

Erica Sandberg: Yeah, it is true. And I've got to hand it to the people who are on top of it because they're doing a really filthy job. They're literally going out there with their cameras and taking pictures of what they see and what they experience. Most of that is happening in certain neighborhoods, but it's all over. If you go check out the poop maps, it's kind of wild because it's everywhere and we don't have public restrooms and hey, we're humans. We're living, breathing things, and we do have to go, and with the sheer number of people who are living on the streets, it's not surprising.

Seth Barron: So what are the estimates of how many people are living on the streets?

Erica Sandberg: Totally depends on who you ask. So, right now the estimate is around 8,200 people who are living on the street. So we're not talking about people who are living in single room occupancy hotels or doing that couch surfing thing or in their cars or RVs. We're talking straight up homeless people. So that's a lot of people for a relatively small city. We only have just shy of 900,000 people who live here in a small space, so it's very concentrated.

Seth Barron: Yeah, that's about double the number of people living on the streets in New York City, which has 10 times the number of people. So I could see that that's a significant issue.

Erica Sandberg: Yeah, and as I say, it does depend on who you ask for those figures. So those are the latest figures from I believe the Department of Housing and Social Services or whatever the name of that department is-- seems to change all the time. The Coalition on Homelessness, which is an advocacy group will estimate it at much, much higher and there are some pretty good reasons they're coming up with those high numbers. So, as I say, it really depends on who is delivering that information.

Seth Barron: Oh, so 8,200 is actually a conservative figure? It could be higher.

Erica Sandberg: Correct. I have heard the leaders of this organization say, 'oh no, it's more like 23,000.' So you're looking at these bloated numbers. And let's face it, the more people that you say are out and about as vagrants, or wherever you want to call them, the more money they're going to be asking for.

Seth Barron: Oh, I see. So is crime an issue in San Francisco? Because I understand California has changed the way it deals with theft and misdemeanors in terms of arrests and prosecutions. So what's happened with low-level crime in San Francisco? Is it a growing issue?

Erica Sandberg: It's become absolutely out of control. You're right Seth. It was Proposition 47, which was passed a number of years ago for California, and what it did is that it switched out crimes that were once considered felonies and they're now considered misdemeanors. So when you have that vast reduction in what they are considered, you can't. . . Here, let me give you an example. So a property theft of an item that's worth less than $950 is no longer a felony. It used to be. It used to be around $340 something dollars, so anything above that was considered a felony. So now this ceiling, the threshold has reached almost $1,000, which now puts property at risk that you would think would be a major crime. So, for example, you're out at a cafe and someone takes your laptop, it's a misdemeanor. Does that or does it not give you, as a thief, the impetus to go out and grab somebody's laptop? Of course it does. The slap on the wrist is going to be very, very light, if at all. So we have seen an explosion in these types of property crimes, which extends to car break-ins, people grabbing cell phones on BART trains, any kind of theft that you might see that seems like it's not going to be this huge smash and grab in a major jewelry store kind of thing. It's a low-level crime. It's nothing.

Seth Barron: So how small businesses responded to this?

Erica Sandberg: Oh, it's terrible for small businesses. They have absolutely been inundated with these thieves who will come and grab stuff and then walk out the door, and some are so bold. I'm constantly going to my Safeway and saying, 'how's it going today? Who came in here and took what?' Like, 'yeah, it was at 8 o'clock in the morning, somebody came in and they cleared out the meat department.' It's not hard to find people who have been impacted, whether it's the small business owner, these mom-and-pop shops that are just trying desperately to survive, to major operations like Safeway and Macy's, where theft has skyrocketed.

Seth Barron: That's frightening. So how has the city responded to this? I assume the elected officials are fighting back and trying to curtail this, right?

Erica Sandberg: Well, you would think. Again, it depends on which department you're looking at. Of course the SFPD has been trying desperately to keep up with it because people are making the calls, they have to respond. So they are the ones on the front lines. They're like, 'okay, well, somebody just called because their car was broken into, or somebody stole their cell phone right out of their hands is they were waiting for their Uber.' They've got to respond, but their hands are tied, so there's only so much they can do. Regarding supervisors and the mayor, they have absolutely fallen short on clamping down on this and it's appalling. And so much of it is driven by two key factors. One is organized crime, which can be small, these little tiny groups of organized criminals, and the other one is drug crimes. And that also was majorly impacted by the passage of Proposition 47 because it essentially said, 'hey, drug use, if you're carrying drugs that are for your personal use up to a certain amount--' and it kind of depends on each type of drug-- 'it's not a felony anymore, it's a misdemeanor.' So it's increased the drug dealing in neighborhoods because so many people can access their drugs, it's easier. And so you're seeing these overlapping crimes. People who need money for their drug use are going to certainly be the ones who are very often on the street, they're not employed. So how are they going to get the money? You can do the math. So the city officials are not taking that type of crime seriously at all.

Seth Barron: So is there a growing resistance to this? How do people feel about it? There's an election this November. Are they going to turn out the mayor or is it going to be more of the same?

Erica Sandberg: What I absolutely love, and this is what's so exciting right now, is that we are seeing this groundswell of people in San Francisco who are done, they are absolutely 100% done with the status quo. So, liberal, conservative, it crosses boundaries. Politics has nothing to do with it. Quality of life has everything to do with it. So yes, we are seeing more people from all over, from all walks of life, say this administration and the way it's being run is, is done. It's over. And it's really, really exciting. So yes, we're definitely seeing a lot of people who are more than willing to overturn what we have right now. The problem is, we don't have many people who are willing to step up and do the job. So you can not elect Mayor Breed, but who was in her place? So right now there are no strong contenders because we don't really have anybody who can step up and say, okay, I'm going to do things differently.

Seth Barron: That's a shame. You wrote a piece for us on what you called "harm production." What did you mean by that?

Erica Sandberg: Well, it's kind of play on harm reduction, which is this theory that instead of helping people off drugs and really putting your attention into things like rehabilitation centers and cracking down on drug crimes, we're just going to help people stay on drugs. And that's really what it is, stay on the substance of their choice, make it safe, make it so the needles are there, they're clean, that people can have immediate access to them. But it's not just with needles, it's also meth pipes, it's also straws that you can use for snorting, which is really hilarious of course, because straws are outlawed here in San Francisco if you're going to use them for a beverage. But the whole premise of it is let's make it clean, safe, accessible so that people can maybe, if they really want to, pursue a life that's free of drugs. But so far we haven't seen that manifest. So it's really bizarre and safe injection sites are part of this. We don't have them yet, there's a huge push for them, and I'm completely opposed to it.

Seth Barron: Yeah, those are coming here, too, in New York.

Erica Sandberg: Are they?

Seth Barron: Well, that's the plan, anyway. It's not clear when or where precisely, but there are advocates for it. Erica, this was a sobering discussion. We'd like to hear your comments about today's episode on Twitter at @CityJournal #10blocks. If you like our show and want to hear more of it, please leave ratings and reviews on iTunes. This is your host, Seth Barron. Erica Sandberg. Thank you so much for joining us.